


Equivalence

by Shearmouth



Series: (Beats back Writer's Block with a Stick) Whumptober 2020! [9]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: A lot - Freeform, Abduction, Blood, Ed needs a hug and he GETS ONE DAMMIT, Edward Elric Swears, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt Edward Elric, Hurt Roy Mustang, Hurt/Comfort, Like, OOOO-OOOOOOO, Papa Roy and Mama Hawk, Parental Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye: keeper of the braincell, Self-Sacrifice, Traumaaaaaaaa, Whumptober 2020, back at it again lads, in the words of cece, to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody:, you know i keep that mf tag ON ME
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27093469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shearmouth/pseuds/Shearmouth
Summary: For Whumptober 9-12.Roy never even saw them.
Relationships: Edward Elric & Riza Hawkeye, Edward Elric & Roy Mustang, Maes Hughes & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang
Series: (Beats back Writer's Block with a Stick) Whumptober 2020! [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947829
Comments: 108
Kudos: 444
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *peeks out from behind a wall*   
> so I won't be able to finish whumptober, as I started to burn myself out again with writing. But I DID just finish FMAB. And it emotionally destroyed me just as much as it did when I last saw it, five years ago at the tender age of fifteen, so in order to process my emotionals I will inflict parental Roy content on all of you. Prepare to die.

Roy never even saw them.

And he was pissed about it. _No one_ could sneak up on him, not even his own team, though they’d tried. Berthold had made sure of it by throwing him into the woods without warning and hunting him. He got caught a lot early on. He still had the scars to prove it.

But the team of Cretan militants had taken him down without a sound, so Roy ground his teeth in annoyance _and_ nausea as his stomach rolled from the trot of the horse beneath him.

Pain radiated through his head from where his molars clamped together. He loosened, and immediately bit through the side of his cheek when his face smashed against the horse’s smelly flank.

Roy tasted blood and growled. God damn this entire fucking day.

The trail seemed to narrow, and the riders shifted in formation. Bright hair flashed in the corner of his eye. Roy looked up urgently, and some of the tension in his throat released.

Thank the gods. They hadn’t killed him, left him broken on the forest floor.

But as Roy took in the sight of his battered subordinate, his relief quickly ceded to dread.

Ed was draped facedown behind the adjacent Cretan soldier, bound by the neck and waist to the saddle. His head swung gracelessly with the choppy trot of the horse, bouncing against the animal’s flank in a way that made Roy wince. His ponytail hung down, shielding his face from view.

He noted, with vague nausea, that they hadn’t bothered to secure his remaining arm.

“Fullmetal,” Roy hissed as quietly as he could. “Hey, Fullmetal. Wake up.”

Ed rolled his head and looked at Roy with one pain-tight eye. “’M awake.”

“Stay that way. I know you’re in shock, but I need you here with me.” Roy’s gut twisted at how checked-out Ed looked. The kid was blinking slowly, face pale, his typical sharp vigilance gone. Roy had never seen him like this.

He’d never seen Ed this hurt.

The fight went bad fast. The two of them made a formidable pair, but they were outnumbered seven to one, and when the Cretans ambushed them, they did so with just enough surprise on their side to catch them off guard.

Roy managed to take three down before he got shot.

He hadn’t even seen any guns on the soldiers, just long sabres and camoflaugued clothes, so when the crack went off and pain shattered in his right leg, it took him a half second to figure out what happened. It was more than enough time for his leg to buckle and the insurgents overwhelm him. They threw him facedown, and one of them knelt on his arms, pinning him.

Ed yelled in alarm. He gave an enraged snarl and kicked out the kneecap of his opponent with his metal foot. The man went down with a howl. Ed had ducked and hamstrung another two soldiers with his automail blade, fighting toward Roy, when the sharp bark of a rifle went off again. Ed jolted hard and stumbled with a grunt. His metal hand flew to his left shoulder, where a ragged tear in his coat started blooming the red fabric maroon.

A massive Cretan soldier barreled into Ed’s side before Roy could shout a warning. He was twice Ed’s height and took him down easily. He tried pinning Ed to the ground with a knee to the chest, but Ed wrenched his right hand free of the Cretan’s grip and made a stab for his face.

The Cretan dodged, barely made it, his cheek sliced wide open. Rage twisted his features, and Roy realized what was about to happen a second before it did.

Roy yelled and struggled, clawing at his captors, but they just kicked him and ground his face into the dirt as the huge Cretan flipped Ed over and knelt on his back.

All Roy could do was watch in horror as the soldier grabbed Ed’s automail bicep and tore his arm off in one savage jerk.

Roy knew he would never be able to scrub his memory clean Ed’s guttural shriek, or the way he slumped facedown without another sound. 

Just before something struck his head and killed his awareness, Roy tried and failed to determine if his subordinate was still breathing.

He could barely determine it now. Ed had slumped down again, swaying limply with the movement of the horse.

“C’mon, kid,” Roy urged, “stay with me.”

A strong hand grasped his hair and yanked his head back. Bright pain lanced behind Roy’s eyes, temporarily whiting out his vision.

“No talking,” the Cretan soldier growled in heavily accented Amestrian. He shoved Roy’s face down into the flank of the horse, yanking his hair once more for good measure. Roy swallowed, trying to get his secret panic under control. There was little he could do in their current situation. His ankles and wrists were firmly bound, and a wide swatch of rope around his ribs secured him to the saddle. Even if he could get free, there was no way he’d be able to flee from the reach of the 10-odd Cretan militants riding around him, especially not with Ed this hurt.

Roy thought of the southern outpost they’d originally been sent to assist. Apparently Central Command deemed the possibility of a violent faction of Cretans attempting to infiltrate the military base at Fellwell was of high enough priority to send both him and Fullmetal to investigate. He’d wanted to bring Hawkeye but couldn’t get it cleared in time. He and Edward barely had an hour themselves between receiving the assignment and boarding a train for the south.

The outpost would investigate when he and Ed failed to return. But this had only been a preliminary scouting expedition, and Roy had told their commander, one Lieutenant Colonel Malcolm, not to expect them back before sundown. A glance to the sky told Roy it was nearing twilight, but by the time Malcolm raised the alarm and came after them, it would likely be too late.

They were heading for the border, and quickly. That much Roy knew. And once they entered Cretan territory, their retrieval would become almost impossible. Even though their captors were just a small, radical faction, there was no way the Amestrian military would be able to justify an extraction team without antagonizing the Cretan government itself.

Sending in a team to rescue him and Ed could start a war. And Central feared Creta, more than senior command would ever overtly let on. The southern country was twice the size of Amestris and three times its population. Even a skirmish would deteriorate rapidly into a bloody border war. 

No, Central would cut its losses. Better to lose two state alchemists than risk provoking Creta, even ones as powerful as Roy and as popular as Edward. It would be easy to explain away their disappearance– Colonel Mustang transferred up North, the Fullmetal Alchemist retiring to return home.

He and Ed would disappear. And no one would come after them.

Well, maybe Roy’s team. But the thought of them getting mixed up in all this made Roy’s blood run cold.

He wracked his brain for solutions, scanned their surroundings for any useful resource. But the pain in his head made it hard to think, and try as he might, he couldn’t find a way out of this.

Maybe when they stopped. Maybe whenever they took him and Ed off these damned horses. A break could form, a chink in their armor. If it was there, Roy would find it.

For now, all he could do was bite down on his gorge and keep glancing at Ed to make sure he was still breathing.

ººº

A gibbous moon had drenched the forest in silver by the time the trot at last slowed to a walk. Roy lifted his head with a wince. He looked across to Edward, and was relieved to see his subordinate glancing around, eyes bloodshot and droopy.

A solider barked an order up front. The horses stopped abruptly. Roy felt the rider dismount, then rough hands were rifling across his back, yanking on the ropes holding him to the saddle.

Sharp pain bit into his ribs, and he flinched reflexively as the ropes were cut the rest of the way. The soldier grabbed him by the throat and shoved him backward.

Just before he hit the ground, Roy prayed half-hysterically that the horse wouldn’t spook. It would just be too anticlimactic for him to die from a hoof to the head.

His bound feet met the earth, and his legs immediately crumpled. Roy fell hard onto his back, punching the air from his chest. His head throbbed ferociously. He blinked the dust and tears from his eyes, struggling to adjust to the dark. Edward. Where was–

A smear of black and blond collapsed next to Roy with a pained moan. Ed had landed on his back too. He was still worryingly pale, and his eyes held the vacant glaze of shock as he stared upward, breathing shallowly.

“Fullmetal,” Roy whispered, trying not to let the dread show in his voice.

“Still…here,” Ed said shallowly. God, he looked like shit. His entire left side was drenched in blood.

The insurgents had gathered in a loose circle around them. The one whose cheek Ed had cut open seemed to be arguing in Cretan with another man who had a piece of orange cloth tied around his bicep. Roy got the feeling he was some kind of leader of this little band. The man’s nostrils flared irritation as the cut-faced soldier gestured broadly toward him and Ed.

Roy wracked his brain. He learned a little Cretan when he first joined the military, enough to get by during diplomatic events. He missed most of the words, but he caught a few: _no, two, one, kill, take._

The leader cut off the other soldier with a harsh word and a motion of his hand. He waved dismissively, and the cut-faced soldier grinned maniacally. He turned and stomped over to where Ed lay breathing shallowly and struggling to lift his head.

“What are you doing?” Roy demanded. They ignored him.

The insurgent bent down and grabbed Ed by the hair.

“Get the fuck away from him!”

Ed cried out as he was yanked off the ground and held in midair. The soldier grinned darkly.

“Leave him alone!” Roy snarled. He struggled to his knees before a boot connected with his back and pinned him, forcing the air from his lungs.

Ed kicked at the insurgent’s chest, but he may as well have been hitting the side of a train. The man just held him at arm’s length, an angry snarl on his scarred face.

He pulled a pistol from his belt and jabbed the muzzle under Ed’s chin. Ed froze.

Roy’s heart stopped.

Ed kicked desperately and made a grab for the gun. The soldier whipped the handle across Ed’s face with a growl. Ed’s head snapped to the side and his legs went still.

The soldier grabbed his chin and forced his face up. Blood poured down the side of Ed’s face from a split in his eyebrow, ink black in the moonlight. Washed out by the night, Ed’s golden eyes looked inhuman.

The insurgent put the gun under Ed’s chin again. A series of emotions– resignation, grief, rage, terror– flitted across the kid’s too-young face. Then he seemed to swallow them all down until a steely blankness overtook his features. He glared at the insurgent levelly.

The soldier snarled. He cocked the pistol.

“Take me instead!”

Everything froze. The lead insurgent and the man with the cut face stared at Roy.

“I know at least one of you understands Amestrian,” Roy continued fiercely, “so fucking listen. You only need one of us? Kill me and take the kid.”

The leader sneered. “We have no use for the Fullmetal child.”

“Why?” Roy challenged. “Whatever you want with us– ransom, intelligence, leverage, it’ll be easier with him. He’s a major and State Alchemist. He knows just as much about military secrets as me.” This was bald-faced bullshit, but Roy was a good liar. “If you’re planning to torture me, it won’t work. I’ve been an officer for twelve years, you think this is the first time I’ve been captured for information?” Roy gestured to Ed, who was staring wide-eyed at him. He winced internally at what he was about to say. “That kid is fourteen. He’ll sing like a bird the second you pull his first fingernail. He may be a prodigy, but he’s no soldier. I only took him on because a record-setting State Alchemist would make me look good.” Roy purposefully refused to look at Ed. 

The leader’s eyes narrowed as he glared at Roy. “And yet you would give your life for his. Jeopardize state secrets.”

Roy scoffed. “You think I care about the military? They used me as a human weapon in Ishval. They turned me into a mass murderer. The whole senior command is corrupt. I would love nothing more than to watch it all burn, and if my death helped make that happen, then I could rest easy.”

Roy hated that the last part was only a half-lie.

He stared down the leader, challenging him to refute his claims.

_Come on…come on._

The leader’s eyebrows rose. He tilted his head in a grudging respect. “It seems we see eye to eye on more than one would expect. Very well, Flame colonel. You get your wish.”

He ticked his chin toward the man holding Ed. The insurgent scowled darkly and pistol-whipped Ed once more before throwing him to the ground. Roy cringed internally at the sound Ed made.

Someone yanked Roy up by the collar and forced him to his knees. He hissed at the pressure on his injured shin.

“Mustang.” Ed had made it up onto his elbows. He was staring at Roy with undisguised horror. “What the hell are you doing?”

Roy didn’t answer. If the insurgents figured out Roy’s true motive, they would kill Ed right there. That alone would do more to shatter Roy’s resolve than any torture.

But he couldn’t show that. He swallowed his heart and glared at Ed. “Be silent, Fullmetal,” he hissed. Ed recoiled, but didn’t back down. Roy held his gaze unflinchingly.

_C’mon, kid. Don’t fight it._

Roy didn’t resist as his hands were pinned firmly to his lower back. Something cold and hard pressed into the base of his skull.

Shit. He was about to die.

Grief roared through him.

Not for himself– he had never feared death, and since the civil war he had never seen his life as having value beyond his mission to change the government and make reparations for the children of Ishvala.

He would die with his task incomplete, and that hurt more than anything.

“You may say your final words, Flame colonel,” the leader announced.

Roy fixed Ed with the most serious stare he could muster through his agony. “Tell Riza to stay the course. Our work is not yet done.”

Ed was shaking. “No, no–“

“ _Fullmetal!”_ Roy snarled. “Tell her!”

“Okay, okay, I will,” Ed said, and Roy’s heart clenched as the kid started biting back gasps, “but just shut the hell up, bastard, don’t–“ 

“Fullmetal.”

Roy looked steadily at Ed. Tears were cutting through the blood in the kid’s face, and Roy realized with a detached sort of grief that Ed would have to carry this for the rest of his life too. One more guilt to take to the grave. 

_I’m sorry, kid._

“Good luck, Edward,” Roy whispered, letting his mask slip a little. “Do not give up.”

_Forgive me._

Roy closed his eyes and exhaled.

“No! No, don’t!”

The leader barked an order in Cretan. The gun against Roy’s head was cocked.

_“Mustang!”_

There was a shout, a bang, a flash of pain.

Roy knew no more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am absolutely blown away by the response on this little fic. Thank you all so much! I hope you like this next installment.

Riza Hawkeye knew fear.

She grew up with it in her shadow. She remembered the way her legs would carry her up to her room almost involuntarily when her father got violent. Fear walked by her side in Ishval. It tackled her at the slightest noise after she and Roy returned home. She had learned how to slip her terror behind a careful façade of competence. No soldier could afford to look afraid, especially not a young woman guarding the Hero of Ishval’s back. Little could visibly rattle her anymore.

But when she got the call from Captain Anders at Fellwell Military Base saying her commanding officer had been shot in the head, she damn near dropped the phone and choked on her own breath.

Riza bit the inside of her cheek and breathed deep. No. There had to be some mistake.

“Can you please repeat that, Captain?” she asked as levelly as she could.

“ _As I said, Lieutenant, Colonel Mustang has suffered a gunshot wound to the head. He’s being transported to a military hospital as we speak. I’m sorry, but I don’t know the extent of the damage.”_ Anders sounded genuinely apologetic.

“Where is E– Major Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist? He accompanied Colonel Mustang on this mission.” God, if Edward had–

Riza swallowed down her fear. The rest of the team knew her well enough to glean that something was wrong. They had put down their work and were watching her tensely.

“ _They were together when we found them. I’m afraid Major Elric has also been seriously injured. From what I could see before he was transported, there was a gunshot wound to his chest and his automail arm was missing.”_

Riza gripped the phone until her knuckles ached. “Captain,” she said, barely suppressing the tremor in her throat, “you will tell me exactly what happened.”

Half an hour later, Alphonse had been called where he was following a lead in Central, and she and Havoc were on a train bound for Fellwell.

Night had fallen. The quiet darkness of the car gave her far too much time to think about how in the flying fuck this had happened. 

According to Hughes, the intelligence was bad. At this point it didn’t really matter. Bottom line, her commander and colleague had been captured by a group of Cretan insurgents and critically injured.

She spared a moment of gratitude for the good fortune that had saved them. A lone hunter in the forest spotted the insurgent group bound for the Cretan border with the alchemists bound to their horses. He reported it to the Fellwell base, who then sent out a team of skilled soldiers in pursuit.

According to Anders, they’d caught up and attacked just as the insurgents were about to execute the Colonel. The executioner was shot just as his own gun went off.

Anders knew nothing beyond the fact that the Colonel was unconscious with a bullet wound to the head. 

The train car was chilly. Riza shivered. Across from her, Havoc snuffled in a fitful sleep.

Riza wished she could follow suit. But the aching dread deep in her belly kept her back ramrod straight.

They could be dead right now. They could be dead and she wouldn’t even know until they arrived.

_I wasn’t there to protect him. Either of them._

The thought wore a raw groove into her mind as the train rushed south through the night.

ººº

A graze.

It was just a graze.

The relief nearly took Riza to her knees.

Roy lay silent and pale in the hospital bed. His shin was splinted and wrapped in clean bandages, and his uniform had been replaced with off-white medical scrubs. He looked small, battered, and breathtakingly alive.

“He may be unconscious for a few days,” the gray-haired doctor–Saers, according to his coat–explained. “There was already a large wound on the back of his skull. If that didn’t give him the concussion, the blast from the pistol at point-blank range certainly did. The bullet wound itself is superficial and should heal fine.”

Riza ghosted her fingers over the wide strip of gauze running along Roy’s left temple.

_Close. Too close._

She turned on her heel and faced Havoc, who was standing next to the door, looking slightly pale.

“Havoc, stay with the Colonel.” The burly second lieutenant nodded curtly and dragged a chair toward Roy’s bedside.

“Doctor,” Riza said, turning to Saers. “Please take me to the Major.”

He led her down a long hallway and up a flight of stairs, then down another passage.

Riza looked sharply at Saers, suspicious. “Why is he not in the post-operative wing?”

Saers grimaced. “Major Elric came through surgery without a problem. The gunshot wound was through-and-through just below his left clavicle. By some miracle it didn’t hit his lung. But when the anaesthesia wore off he became quite combative. We had to move him to the secure ward for his safety and that of the staff.”

_Secure ward?_

Before Riza could ask that the hell that meant, they turned a corner, and she heard a familiar, desperate voice coming from behind one of the closed ward doors.

“No! Let me go, you fuckers! Let me _go_! _”_

Riza started running, ignoring Saers’s protesting shout. She shouldered the door open to a sight that stopped her cold.

Edward was strapped to the hospital bed. His eyes were blown wide, face shiny with tears and mouth open in a terrified snarl as he thrashed and kicked. His shirt was gone, and wide swatch of bandages encircled his left shoulder, already becoming spotted with new blood. Where his automail used to be was now just his shoulder port, the skin around it raw and inflamed. One nurse was pinning Ed’s automail leg to the bed as another struggled to strap it down.

Ed kicked out desperately. “Get the fuck off me!”

“Major Elric, you need to calm down, or we’ll have to sedate you again,” one of the nurses said sternly.

“I don’t need to calm down, I need you to tell me where the _fuck_ Mustang is!” Ed snarled. He snapped his metal foot up, catching the nurse in the wrist. She recoiled, anger flashing over her face.

“That’s it, I’m putting him under,” she declared. She made for the IV stand.

“ _No!_ Don’t you fucking touch me! Tell me where Mustang is! Is he even alive?!” Ed roared, his voice cracking.

The nurse grabbed his bicep and brought the syringe down.

“No!” Ed shrieked.

“THAT’S ENOUGH!”

Everyone froze.

Riza stared down the shaft of her pistol. The nurse she had it trained on blanched.

“Get away from him. Now,” Riza commanded, low and furious. The nurse backed up slowly, dropping the needle onto the IV tray and raising her shaking hands into the air.

Edward gaped at her with raw relief. “Lieutenant?” he choked.

Riza didn’t take her eyes from the nurse who’d been ready to sedate Edward. “Undo the restraints.”

The nurses hesitated, glancing nervously between her and Edward.

“Do it!” Hawkeye snapped. They flinched and went to work undoing the straps. Edward didn’t move.

“Lieutenant Hawkeye!” Saers yelped from behind her.

Riza whirled. “You restrained a fourteen-year-old, severely injured amputee?” She lowered her pistol, despite her strong urge to whip it across the now-pale face of the doctor.

Saers spluttered. “He was fighting us–it was dangerous–“

“No,” Riza said flatly. “I don’t want to hear it. Go file for exchange of care for Major Elric and Colonel Mustang. I’m having them transferred to Central Military Hospital immediately.”

“Lieutenant, this is ludicrous–“

Riza glared at him ferociously. “They’re both stable. By my understanding, there is no medical risk of their being transferred. And even if there was, I refuse to allow them to spend another second under your care. Go file the transfer forms. _Now.”_

The venom in her words made Saers cringe. He scurried away without another word.

Riza turned back to the nurses, who were staring at her like the frightened rabbits she used to hunt as a child.

“Get out,” Riza ordered icily.

The nurses fled.

Riza holstered her pistol with a little more force than necessary. Her better judgement had left the safety on, despite the protective rage that prompted her to draw the weapon in the first place. She clenched her teeth and closed the door, quietly so as not to startle Edward.

Edward, who was sitting upright on the bed, staring at her.

Riza approached him slowly, palms up. “Edward? It’s me.”

She’d seen the young alchemist frustrated, elated, enraged, but the feral terror on his face was foreign to her. He looked like a cornered animal. He stared at her, panting and shuddering.

“M-Mustang,” Edward said, voice shaking, “You said me and Mustang–he’s alive?”

Riza’s heart lurched. “Yes, he’s alive, he’s going to be fine.”

Edward shook his head desperately. “They shot him in the head–I passed out after–“

“It just grazed him,” Riza said. “The outpost soldiers found you just in time.” She crouched by his bedside. “Can you walk?”

Ed nodded shakily.

“Come on, then.” Riza draped Edward’s remaining arm over her shoulders. “I can tell you don’t believe me. Let’s go see him so you can prove it to yourself.”

She levered the boy’s iron-tense body off the bed and helped him swing his feet over the side. Edward went pale, but he squared his jaw and lowered his feet. He came to standing slowly, swaying as his face turned even whiter. Hawkeye readied herself in case he passed out, dreading it. She couldn’t leave Edward here alone, but she loathed being away from Roy any longer. At least Havoc was with him.

Edward straightened, biting down on a whimper as he reflexively moved his shoulder for balance. Hawkeye tightened her hold around him. “Are you all right?”

Edward swallowed. “Yeah,” he said thickly. “Let’s go.”

They shuffled down the hallway at a snail’s pace. Riza glanced over as much as stealth would allow, knowing that Edward would lock up if he caught her assessing him.

Riza didn’t like what she was seeing.

She knew how to read people. Supporting an ambitious colonel in a cutthroat military made getting a quick bead on someone a survival skill. Though Edward had only been with them two years, Hawkeye knew him well. The kid tried to keep his inner workings shielded from the outside world, but she could see right through them.

She’d been here before, after all. When she was younger and lighter and the circumstances were reversed, a city boy coming to the country. But that boy had been an orphan too, with a chip on his shoulder a mile wide, and Riza had sniffed out the trail through his prickly defenses within a week of his arrival.

The smiliarities unnerved her sometimes. That gleam of intense ambition looked no different in gold eyes than in black.

Reading him now, Riza could see clearly that Edward was stretched tight as piano wire. His frame trembled, and as they walked, he bit back gasps of pain when his shoulder was jostled. His eyes were wide and hunted, flitting around the hallway as if he expected to be attacked. It made a sick feeling twist in Riza’s stomach.

Edward’s injuries were profound, but in the all the time Riza had known him, he had never once let on that he was rattled or in pain. Only a few months after Edward received his state certification, she assisted in the arrest of a family annihilator the brothers had tracked down. The killer had just been handcuffed and taken away when Riza turned to the boys to commend them, Roy next to her. None of them had noticed the stab wound in Edward’s side until the kid sat down hard on the curb, wrapped an arm around his middle, and hacked up blood. Two surgeries and a year later, Edward passed out in front of Roy’s desk in the middle of a report. The head wound he sustained from connecting face-first with the edge of the polished oak desktop paled in comparison to the severe case of pneumonia the doctors uncovered. A few months after that, she’d seen Edward after he recently returned from a city in the south where two squalling religious factions had broken into guerilla warfare. The conflict was promptly quashed, somehow with no casualties, but Alphonse sported a few new holes in his armor and Edward’s recently perforated automail hung uselessly at his side while he cursed out Roy for not telling them exactly what the hell he was sending them into. Aside from the arm, the ire and a light sunburn, one might not be able to tell the thirteen-year-old had just traversed a small warzone.

Edward did not scare easily. He would not have survived this long if he did.

So the fact that the boy was now walleyed with undisguised fear, and making little hitching sounds of pain every now and then, deeply unsettled Riza. 

Gods. What had happened out there?

The stairs were nervewracking, but eventually they reached Roy’s room.

Havoc, who’d been sitting at Roy’s bedside, shot up as Riza swung the door wide and helped Edward inside. “H-hey, Chief! Good to see you.”

Edward didn’t reply. He had stopped at the foot of the bed, staring at Roy’s silent figure.

“Havoc,” Riza said. Havoc turned to her and pushed his shoulders back at the militant tone she had adopted. “Go find that– _doctor,_ and get the transfer forms from him. We’re going back to Central.”

Havoc blinked. “Wh-now? Tonight?”

“Yes,” Riza said curtly. “Unless you have a problem with that?”

Havoc seemed to take in the tense anger that had barely faded from Riza’s stance. He nodded sharply. “Of course not, Lieutenant. I’m on it.” He left hastily, trailing the faint scent of cigarette smoke and closing the door behind him.

Riza adjusted her grip on Edward. “Come on, Edward, you should sit down.”

He didn’t say anything, just let Riza guide him over to the stiff hospital seat at Roy’s bedside. Not wanting to be far in case Ed’s blood pressure bottomed out and he gave himself yet another head injury, Riza pulled another chair up next to his.

If she was alone, she would take Roy’s hand.

Instead she rested her fingers on the curve of his wrist. If Ed asked, she could pass it off as a pulse check.

But he didn’t ask. He didn’t say anything. Riza turned.

Edward was staring at Mustang intensely. A tangled set of emotions cut his bruised face, chief among them fear. And anger. An anger so deep Riza hardly recognized it.

“Edward,” she murmured, the dread from earlier flaring as she took in his tortured expression. She didn’t need to say more. She knew he could hear the meanings in her tone, in the gentle way she said his name. _You can tell me. You can tell me what happened. You can tell me what hurts._

Edward sniffled. He rubbed his face against his collar, wincing at the movement. When he straightened back up, his eyes were red.

“Why the fuck would he do that?” he whispered roughly.

Riza tilted her head. “Do what?”

“What he did, he– how could he just– the fucking–“ Ed sniffled again, made an aborted movement with his hand, like he wanted to scrape it over his face as he often did when stressed or upset. “How could he just fucking throw his life away like that?”

Riza’s throat closed up. “What do you mean?” she asked, somehow keeping her voice steady. 

“He…when we got captured by the rebels, they– tore my arm off,” Ed rasped. “I passed out. I don’t know why I didn’t die, honestly, Winry always warned me about how traumatic amputation could kill you, overload the nervous system, but I didn’t die, I woke up tied up on the back of a horse and Mustang was there. He was pretty banged up, but he was talking. I don’t know how long they carried us, everything’s kinda fuzzy. But eventually they stopped and threw us off.”

Riza already knew what was going to happen. She didn’t want to hear it. She was desperate to know.

“They were speaking Cretan. I don’t know any,” Edward continued. “But I guess Mustang did. This one big guy picked me up and– he was going to shoot me in the head. Mustang told them to take him instead. That if they only needed one, they should kill him instead of me.”

Riza was glad Edward was still looking at Roy instead of her, because for a moment she could not keep the pain off her face.

_You damn fool. How can you expect to get to the top, caring as much as you do?_

“He lied, and they believed him,” Edward continued. “They dropped me and made him kneel. They…they said he could say his final words, and he told me to tell you to– to stay the course. That you guys’ work wasn’t done.”

Riza swallowed down the surge of agony that rose in her throat.

They’d planned for something like this, sure. How one would carry on should the other fall. But in the long years since Ishval, despite her and Roy’s dangerous lives, those crisp hypotheticals had never gotten this close to becoming reality.

Riza thought she knew how to cope in a world without Roy. Now she wasn’t so sure. The fact that she had nearly had to find out turned her stomach.

“Did he say anything else?” she asked softly.

Edward’s expression hardened. “He told me not to give up,” he spat. “Like he has the right to tell me that. I mean, where– where the fuck does he get off, trading his life for mine? Like some kind of fucked-up equivalence? That’s not– he’s–“ Edward cut off with a pained sound that he only could swallow half of. He sniffled harshly and rubbed his face on his collar, clearly hard enough to hurt.

Riza settled her hand on his shoulder. He stilled. His eyes were red again.

“He would do it for any of his people,” she murmured.

“But I’m not his people,” Edward protested. “I mean, I’m his subordinate, yeah, but I’m not like you, or Havoc, or Hughes, or any of them. I haven’t been helping him become Fuhrer for years. I mean, we drive each other crazy, I’m always getting on his nerves and breaking shit in his office and– and–who the hell does he think he is, anyway? Pulling stupid shit like that? Stupid goddamn bastard. Fucking bastard...” Ed trailed off, his voice going hoarse. He had deflated more and more as he spoke until he was bent over at the waist. With the bloody dressings on his chest and the bruises over his face, he seemed impossibly small and beaten down.

And young. So heartbreakingly young.

Riza tightened her grip on his shoulder. “You’ve both been through a lot,” she said. “And it will take a while to recover. But he’s going to wake up, and when he does, I suggest that you talk to him.”

Edward looked up at her through his sweaty bangs. “About what?”

“About what you just said. I can’t answer any of those questions.”

“But you– you know him better than anyone! You must know why he would do something so stupid–“

“It is not my place,” Riza said, gently but firmly. “You will have to ask the Colonel once you’re both well enough.”

Edward glared half-heartedly at her, the effect destroyed by the minute tremor in his bottom lip. He bit his cheek and looked back down. “What am I supposed to do in the meantime?” he muttered.

Riza squeezed his shoulder again, wishing she could otherwise tell this brilliant, hurting child that he did not have to hold himself together all on his own. “You stay the course.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD IT'S DONE IT'S FINALLY DONE   
> This story just would. Not. End. Sorry for the long-ass delay, my inspiration deserted me and I just could not seem to finish this. But I hope this satisfies! Thanks so much to everyone who's read, commented, and kept up with this story. You're all lovely :) 
> 
> P.S. If you're an American in Georgia please vote blue in the runoff so we can GET THAT SENATE HUNTY

Roy hated concussions.

This wasn’t his first. It wouldn’t be his last. Didn’t make it any less shitty. Even in his comfortable ward in Central Military, with the medical-grade painkillers helping him forget that a half-inch-deep furrow had been carved into his head, he was twitchy and bored.

He didn’t even see why he still needed to be here. When he complained about it to Hawkeye a few hours after he woke up, she’d fixed him with that unique expression that Roy easily translated into, to _What are you, stupid?_

“You sustained a severe head injury, Colonel,” she deadpanned. “And an open fracture to your tibia via a gunshot wound. Even you can’t just walk that off.”

Loath as Roy was to admit it, she was right. He couldn’t even start wading through the torrent of paperwork this whole fiasco had generated. When he tried to read, the words promptly swam off the page and into the pan at his bedside, along with his breakfast. 

His impotent annoyance was somewhat tempered at his best friend’s arrival.

Then quickly replaced by chagrin.

Maes Hughes was _pissed._

“Roy Mustang,” Maes growled as he scraped a chair over the floor and planted himself at Roy’s left. “What the _hell_ is wrong with you?”

Roy couldn’t help but smirk. “Good to see you too, Maes.”

“Wipe that grin off your face!” Maes’s nostrils flared. “How do you get into these situations? Are you a masochist?” His eyes flashed behind his glasses, and Roy realized soberingly that Maes was actually upset. That was a rare thing.

Roy grimaced. “It’s not like I _asked_ for us to be captured.”

“No, but you decided to go traipsing off into the forest with only Ed as your backup! When you knew there were insurgents in the area! What did you think was going to happen?”

Roy bristled. “You told Hawkeye the intelligence was bad!”

“Yeah, and I only found that out _last night_ when Havoc called me in a panic saying you and Ed had been ambushed and were maybe dying in some southern backwater!” Maes huffed and ran a hand through his already-disheveled hair. “I swear Roy, you’re giving me more gray hairs than my own daughter, and she’s _two.”_

Roy sighed and rubbed his eyes. Maes had always been somewhat of a mother hen. Since entering fatherhood he had developed an almost pathological protective streak for any of his people. There was no reasoning with him.

“Maes,” Roy said seriously, grabbing Maes’s wrist. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

Maes softened. “Thanks, but it’s not me you need to apologize to.”

Roy frowned, confused. “What are you talking about?”

Maes grimaced. He leaned back, adjusting his glasses as he did when stressed. “Ed’s pretty shaken up.”

“What do you mean?” Roy knew the gyst of his young subordinate’s status. When Roy woke up for good, alone in an empty hospital room, his first thought was a baffled, _Wait, what?_

The second was a searing image of Edward’s bloody chest, his wide, horrified eyes, his desperate pleading to _No, no don’t!_

Roy had damn near ripped his IV out to try and track down someone who could tell him where the hell his subordinate was before Hawkeye came in and pinned him to the mattress with a glare. Apparently, they were in Central, and Ed was a few doors down with a bullet wound to his shoulder, battered but out of danger.

Roy wanted to go see him. Hawkeye said no. Damn that pesky detail that he couldn’t walk, or even sit up without getting nauseous. Roy had to content himself with the knowledge that Ed was under the same roof, alive and safe.

But that deep, nameless part of Roy, the same one that looked at a dull-eyed child three years ago and said _Look out for this one,_ urged him to go see for himself.

How could he know for sure unless he saw the kid in front of him, glaring defiantly and threatening to add a new dent to Roy’s desk?

He also felt like shit for what he’d said to the leader of the insurgents. No one dared voice it to Roy’s face, but he knew there were plenty among the higher-ups who thought Ed really was just a PR tool for Roy’s ambition. Alchemical genius notwithstanding, there were close-minded bastards throughout the upper echelons who would never see past Ed’s youth. Roy knew Ed knew about them. If Roy heard the whispers in the mess hall, or the outright out-loud disdain of senior commanders, Ed was sure to have caught them too. He’d never showed any reaction or even admitted awareness to it, but Roy suspected that Ed, a self-judgmental soul if there ever was one, couldn’t help but take some of their derision to heart. Hearing Roy say it aloud, even as a tactical lie, must have hurt.

And if Roy was honest with himself, it wasn’t just proof of life he wanted, or the chance to apologize.

He had _never_ seen Ed that desperate. He’d never even seen the kid cry. Roy felt sick. 

It seemed Maes held a similar sentiment. His face tightened. “It doesn’t surprise me that Hawkeye didn’t tell you. Apparently, Ed was panicking pretty badly when she got to the hospital in Fellwell. The hospital staff strapped him to the damn table.”

Cold rage flared in Roy’s chest. “They did _what?”_ he snarled. He half-rose from the bed, anger vibrating through him. His head throbbed, and he winced.

Maes gave him a flat glare. “Lie down, you pyromaniacal moron. See, this is why Hawkeye didn’t tell you­–“

“They restrained him? He was missing an _arm!_ He’d been shot!”

“Tell me about it,” Maes growled. “If it’s any consolation, Hawkeye drew a bead on the nurses until they untied him and got your transfer forms. That’s why you’re in Central instead of Fellwell.”

Roy slumped back. _Motherfuck._ As satisfying as it was to think of his lieutenant holding her guns on idiot doctors, he couldn’t shake the outrage that she’d had to do it at all. “I can’t believe they did that.”

“I can,” Maes said simply. “Kid’s scary when he’s scared. And Hawkeye seemed to think he was terrified.”

Roy frowned at him in confusion.

Maes rolled his eyes, exasperated. “Roy, he watched you get shot in the head. And according to Hawkeye, he said you traded places with him. Told the Cretans to kill you instead of him.” Maes raised his eyebrows, like he was trying to drive home his point– the point Roy couldn’t quite grasp.

“Yeah, but…” But Roy couldn’t square the Ed he knew– petulant, bullheaded, ever-armed with a new insult to fling Roy’s way– with the shocked, shaking child screaming his name.

“But it’s Fullmetal,” Roy finished, the firmness in his voice belying his sudden unease. “He barely tolerates me on a good day. He’s been in battles worse that that plenty of times before.” Roy nodded smartly. “He must’ve just still been in shock from having his automail torn off.”

Maes rolled his eyes at Roy with an expression annoyingly similar to Hawkeye’s _Are you stupid_ face.

Shit, he needed to talk to get a lid on this. His friends were getting too good at making Roy feel like an idiot without even speaking.

“What?” Roy demanded.

Maes sighed, fond and exasperated. He smacked his knees and stood. “Well, I need to go. I promised Hawkeye I’d help her with the paperwork, since you’re so useless right now. Not that you do your paperwork anyway. You don’t pay that woman enough, Roy.” He slid on his coat, grinning impishly. 

“I don’t pay her at all, I’m her command– wait, Maes, what was that look for?” Roy yelped indignantly.

Maes opened the door. “I’ll let you figure it out. You’re the brilliant alchemist, after all!” He paused and looked back, sobering. “But I’ll give you a hint. Talk to Ed. When he’s ready.”

ººº

Roy didn’t get the opportunity to do so until two days later, when he woke up in the middle of the night and looked down to see his adolescent subordinate snoring by his hip. 

Roy blinked in surprise. Ed was sitting in the beside chair and had draped his narrow torso over the side of the mattress, pillowing his head on his elbow. The collar of his hospital shirt had was stretched down, revealing pristine bandages covering his left shoulder.

Roy swallowed bile. Asleep, the kid looked even smaller. Without his arm, he looked incomplete.

How much blood had he left out there on the forest floor?

How close had he cut it this time? 

Ed snuffled and smacked his lips. His hair was down, and Roy resisted the sudden strange urge to brush it out of his subordinate’s bruised face. Like this, it was easy to remember that Ed was only fourteen.

God help him, that made Roy’s heart clench sometimes, even though he was the bastard who’d recruited him in the first place.

As Roy took him in, Ed whimpered softly and clenched his fist in the blanket. His face contorted. “No…don’t–”

_Oh, shit._

“Fullmetal,” Roy said, dread pooling in his stomach. He’d had his fair share of nightmares, he knew what they looked like. “Fullmetal, wake up.” He gently rested his hand on Ed’s shoulder.

As soon as Roy touched him, Ed sat bolt upright with a gasp. He blinked rapidly, breathing hard, and looked at Roy like he expected him to disappear.

Roy carefully withdrew his hand. “Are you all right?” he murmured.

Ed released a harsh breath. It almost echoed in the silent hospital room. He seemed to be coming back to himself. He blinked, shook his head as if to clear it, and his raw expression shuttered.

“I’m fine,” he muttered. “Sorry I woke you.” He stood unsteadily, swaying, and Roy instinctively reach out to steady him.

“I said I’m fine!” Ed snapped. He glared at Roy with such deep rage that Roy couldn’t help but recoil.

Ed looked away with an irritated growl and turned. “Just leave it. Go back to sleep.”

He started for the door, unbalanced and tense with pain.

“You know I didn’t mean it, right?” Roy blurted.

Ed froze.

“What I said about only recruiting you because it would make me look good,” Roy continued.   
“And that you were weak. I didn’t mean it. I was just–“ _I needed to get you out of there._ “I didn’t mean it. Yes, it helps my career, but that’s not– it’s not the only reason,” Roy finished lamely.

_You fool, why can’t you just say it?_

Ed whirled. “You think that’s– you think I’m mad about _that?”_ he said incredulously. “Are you serious? You’re so fucking stupid, Mustang–“

Roy’s considerable pride bridled. “That’s no way to address your superior officer, Fullmetal–“

“Shut up, bastard! You really think I care about what you said to that Cretan asshole? _Al’s_ called me worse than that since we were kids!” Ed glared, and when Roy didn’t reply– he had no clue what to say to that, honestly– he scoffed and rolled his eyes. “God. No wonder Havoc says Hawkeye doesn’t share the braincell–“

“Havoc said _what–“_

“Seriously, it’s a miracle you’ve lived this long, you’re so goddamn dense, you fucking–“

Ed lifted his hand, like he was about to run his hand through his hair as Roy often saw him do when he was stressed. The motion activated his shoulder, the bandages shifting under the thin collar of the hospital shirt, and Ed’s face went bone white. He gasped brokenly.

“Fullmetal?” Roy asked in alarm. He was rising from the bed before he even realized it, and a bolt of agony shot through his shattered leg. He grit his teeth through the pain, focusing on his now-trembling subordinate.

“Fullmetal!” Roy snapped, tongue sharpened by pain and urgency. “Sit down before you fall down and stunt your growth even more.” 

Ed half-straightened, and instead of snarling a retort, nodded shakily. He crept back to the chair and settled gingerly into it, biting his lip hard enough to shove back its color. His skin was ashen.

“You shouldn’t even be out of bed,” Roy scolded. “You’re seriously injured, Fullmetal _._ Honestly, why do you always insist on pushing yourself until you’re–“

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“You could have called for the nurses, they could’ve given you something–“

“I couldn’t _sleep,”_ Ed cut him off harshly, seizing Roy’s gaze with haunted eyes, “because every time I close my eyes, I see you getting _shot in the head.”_

Silence draped itself over them. Roy couldn’t speak past the sudden lump in his throat.

Ed held his gaze, then looked away with a frustrated exhale, blinking rapidly.

_Oh, shit, Maes was right._

For a few long moments, neither of them spoke. Roy’s throat worked through the sudden lump in his throat.

Ed lifted his hand again, and hissed.

“Do you want me to braid it?” Roy asked.

Ed stared at him like Roy had sprouted wings. “What?”

“Your hair. I know it’s bothering you. Do you want me to braid it?”

Ed blinked slowly. “I sleep with it loose.”

“Were you planning on going back to sleep?” Roy asked bluntly. He knew those kinds of waking nightmares. They stole rest like nothing else could.

“Well, no,” Ed muttered, glancing down. “Fine. Whatever.”

He turned around in the chair and rested his chin on the backrest. Roy scooched over as much as he could and started gently gathering the burnished strands. Ed’s hair was stiff with blood and snarled at the ends. Roy began to comb his fingers through it, moving slowly, taking care not to pull. He’d gotten a brush to the forehead more than once for yanking on his sisters’ hair when he helped them get ready for the night. Even Adrienne and Ruth, harsh of humor and high of pain tolerance, would yelp at a complex plait.

Ed had been through enough pain at Roy’s hands over the last week. So Roy went slow, and as he picked apart the tangles, some of the tension in Ed’s back began to ease.

Roy hummed. “I haven’t done this in a long time.”

Ed looked back over his shoulder quizzically. “How do you know even know how to braid?”

Roy chuckled wryly. “I grew up in a brothel, Fullmetal. I know numerous hairstyles. And makeup. And how to avoid antagonizing eleven women simultaneously experiencing their time of month.”

Ed’s face reddened. “You grew up in–you know what, why am I not surprised. No wonder you’re such a womanizer.” He replaced his chin on the backrest.

Roy snorted as he teased apart a stubborn knot. “I’m flattered. But all those ‘dates’ are actually my sisters.”

“What the _fuck,_ Colonel, that’s just wrong!”

“Wh- get your head out of the gutter!” Roy spluttered. “They’re my informants. They give me intelligence.”

“Well, someone has to.” 

“Shut up,” Roy grumbled, barely resisting the urge to yank out one of Ed’s hairs.

Ed snickered, mismatched shoulders hitching a little with mirth. Some of the tightness around Roy’s heart eased. If Ed was insulting him, he had to be feeling a bit better.

The hair now as neat as it would get, Roy sectioned it into three and let muscle memory take over. His scraped-up fingers danced around each other, weaving the bright strands into one.

“You probably shouldn’t tell me secrets like that,” Ed said casually.

Roy smirked. “Why not? Do I need to worry about you turning coat and selling information to the Drachman mafia?”

Ed huffed. “You piss me off enough and I just might. No, I just mean you shouldn’t share important shit like that to people outside of your team.”

Roy frowned in confusion. “What are you talking about? You’re my subordinate.”

“Yeah, but I’m not, like, your _team._ Lieutenant Hawkeye and them.” Ed gave a sawed-off shrug. “They’re your people, y’know? I’m your– show pony.”

Roy’s hands stilled, an ugly feeling in his gut. “I told you I didn’t mean it.”

“I know you didn’t,” Ed said easily. “But still, they’ve all been with you for years, helping you get to the top. I’m not important to your plans like them. So you probably shouldn’t tell me secrets like that.” There was something odd in his voice, something Roy couldn’t name. 

The braid wasn’t done. Roy tied it off anyway. “Turn around, Fullmetal.”

Ed must have tagged the gravity in Roy’s tone. When he rotated, his expression was guarded. With his hair pulled back, he looked slightly more like himself, but Roy still couldn’t see past the dusky bruising across Ed’s face and neck. It made his throat sting.

Roy sighed. “There are those among the brass who think you’re just a publicity stunt. That I just wanted the credit of discovering such a gifted young alchemist and recruiting him to the military. But tell me, Fullmetal. Do you really think I would take a bullet for a show pony?”

Ed glared challengingly. “You would’ve done it for anyone. You’re a bastard, but you’re an alchemist too, you respect the sanctity of human life–“

“I took hundreds of human lives in Ishval, using alchemy,” Roy cut in. He swallowed thickly. “But I know that in the long run, I can prevent a war like that ever happening again– prevent death like that– by becoming Fuhrer and reforming the government of this country. So no, Fullmetal. I wouldn’t have done it for anyone. And certainly not for a child merely serving as a feather in my cap.”

Ed’s suspicious face spasmed. “But you did for me.”

Roy held his gaze. “Yes,” he said evenly.

“Why?” The tangled mess of emotions snarling up that one word threw Roy for a loop. Confusion, yes, but also…fear.

Roy wanted to say a lot in that moment.

_Because you’re fourteen and I’m an adult so I’m morally obligated to protect you._

_Because I goaded you into this mess._

_Because you’re worth saving, and sometimes, I don’t think you know that._

Instead, Roy murmured, “You have a promise to keep.”

Ed huffed. “So do you. Several, actually. You’re going to have to give me a little more than–“

“Because you would have done it for anyone,” Roy cut in, almost harsh. “You would have taken that bullet for anyone. You talk a big game, Fullmetal, and that’s not to say there aren’t a few _very_ disgruntled officials in various towns across the East, but no matter how much you bitch about it I know you actually enjoy helping people. And with your continental guilt complex, any death you’re even adjacently involved in feels like it’s entirely your fault.”

“I-I don’t have a guilt complex!” Ed spluttered.

Roy just raised an eyebrow.

Ed slumped a little. “Okay, maybe.”

Roy’s face softened. “You would have done it for anyone,” he repeated, gentler now, “and that is a rare and valuable quality. This country needs more people like you than it does people like me.”

“People like you?” Ed challenged. He wouldn’t meet Roy’s eyes anymore. “What, insufferable dumbasses?”

“Murderers,” Roy said bluntly. “Soldiers. This is a militant nation, an imperial one. It’s caused so much death and destruction, and it can’t continue. I intend to change that, but if there are not people like you–“ Roy reached out and carefully hooked a finger under Ed’s bruised jaw, lifting his face to meet his eyes– “to inherit a changed Amestris, there is no point.”

Ed’s eyes had become strangely bright. He seemed to be holding Roy’s gaze from sheer spite, but Roy could feel how his subordinate was trembling. “People like me? What the hell does that mean?”

Roy half-smiled. “I did mean it when I said you’re not a soldier. Because you’re not. Soldiers are called to kill. You don’t enlist if you’re not prepared to do that. Though you are a member of the military, and you have been in life-threatening situations, you have sworn not to kill. And you’ve kept that promise.”

“Okay, so you’re ‘placing your faith in the next generation’ and all that bullshit,” Ed snapped, shaking his chin from Roy’s grip. “And you talk a big game too, Mustang, and you’re such a damn politician that you can’t help but talk like one, but none of that has answered my original question of why. Would you do that. For _me.”_

Ed’s whole body was shaking, and he glared at Roy with his trademark rage, but Roy could see through to the deep self-loathing that Ed always kept so well-hidden, even from his brother. Roy had recognized it the second he met him, and every now and then, Ed would slip up and Roy would glimpse it. At times it was like looking in a mirror.

Roy had never realized how deep it ran until now.

“Because you’re worth it,” Roy murmured. _Even if you don’t think you are._

“So are you!” Ed protested. “My life has no more value than yours–“

“I couldn’t let you die!”

Roy hadn’t meant to say it. Ed clearly hadn’t expected him to.

For a second they stared at each other. Ed’s expression was raw and stunned.

Roy sighed and dropped his gaze. He rested his aching head in his hands.

“I couldn’t let you die,” he repeated dully. “You scared the shit out of me, when he tore your arm off– I thought– I thought your heart had stopped, you went so still. And then we were both still alive, and then I realized what they were doing, and– and I wasn’t about to let Alphonse lose the only family he has left.” Roy swallowed around the heaviness in his throat. “And I couldn’t– I couldn’t watch you die. Not when I could stop it. I don’t think…I _know_ I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did.”

The silence stretched.

“Well, go ahead and mock me,” Roy muttered. “I know you want–“

Something thudded against Roy’s shoulder. Roy lifted his head.

Ed pushed his forehead further into Roy’s collarbone, hiding his face. All Roy could see was the uneven, blood-crusty braid and the tense curl of his subordinate’s back.

Roy froze.

Once, when they were young, Riza took him to one of her hunting blinds deep in the forest and told him to wait. At length, a yearling buck stepped into the clearing before them, barely twenty feet away. Roy had never seen one in person before. He was awestruck by the silence of its movement, the delicate build of its head. An unfamiliar stillness settled over him, and he knew that if he moved or made a sound, this careful being would flee and not return.

He hadn’t felt that in a long time. But as Ed leaned against his chest, Roy remembered how it felt to encounter a rare thing.

Because Ed never touched anyone, except Alphonse, and sometimes Riza. Even when he was hurt, he’d typically only yield to the medics when he was on the verge of passing out. Roy figured it had to do with his not wanting to reveal his automail. Though Roy knew his secret, Ed never made physical contact with him, batting away Roy’s playful pats on the back with an irritable snarl.

Now he was burying his face in the lapel of Roy’s hospital shirt, and he was– _crying._

Tiny, hitching sounds that shook his whole frame and nudged his forehead against Roy’s suddenly damp clavicle.

And all Roy could do was sit there frozen like a goddamn idiot because _Edward was crying_ and Roy’d never had to comfort a child in his entire adult life.

Ed gave a choked gasp. The movement jostled his shoulder, and he whimpered, curling inward sharp and unsteady, and before he realized what he was doing Roy had circled an arm around Ed’s upper back and held him still.

Roy had hoped it would calm him down, but Ed just started crying harder, heaving with chesty sobs. He made another small noise of pain, and for some reason that jolted Roy from his stupor. He wrapped his arm carefully around Ed’s back and pulled him in.

Any tension left in the boy’s frame fizzled out. He draped against Roy like all the tendons of his resolve had been sliced through. Maybe they had. Maybe this was the first time since– since before his mother’s death, maybe, or the automail surgery, that Edward had really leaned on someone other than himself.

So Roy let him. He pulled him close, mindful of Ed’s injuries, and let him.

Ed took it as the permission that it was. His sobs got harder, heavier, and he started gasping. The hand between them, fisted tight in the fabric of Roy’s hospital shirt, began to shake.

“Hey, hey, breathe, kid,” Roy soothed. “C’mon, I can’t have you passing out on me. Take a breath.”

Ed heaved in air, the exhale hot and rough against Roy’s collarbone.

“That’s it.” Roy ran his hand up Ed’s back, the way his sisters would when he got sick as a child. He remembered the way calm seemed to trail in the wake of their palms.

It was having the same effect on Ed. The kid’s cries were slowing, and his breathing was coming easier.

“That’s it, Fullmetal. That’s it. It’s okay. You’re all right.” Roy’s heart felt raw and heavy. “I’m sorry– for what happened, I’m sorry you had to see that. You thought you were going to die, and that’s terrifying.” 

“It’s not–“ Ed muttered, almost low enough to make Roy think he wasn’t meant to hear, from somewhere around Roy’s solar plexus, “– not me I was scared for, dumbass.” Ed unfolded himself, straightening a little, but not far enough for Roy’s arm to slip from his back. His face was red and smeared with tears, and he wouldn’t meet Roy’s eyes.

“What do you mean?” Roy asked.

Ed’s bruised face flushed redder. He grimaced. “Nothing.”

Roy gently hooked a knuckle under Ed’s chin again and nudged his face up. He caught the kid’s gaze and gave him his best _You’re full of shit and we both know it_ face.

Another one of Hawkeye’s traits that rubbed off on him. From the day they met, she could see right through him.

Roy had always been able to see right through Ed, too. But normally– never, actually– would Ed yield to it.

But now, Ed glared back fiercely through red-rimmed eyes and growled, “Don’t ever do that again.”

Roy blinked. “What?”

“Don’t ever do that again,” Ed repeated. “Don’t you ever pull that self-sacrificing bullshit again.”

Roy’s nostrils flared in irritation. “I already told you–“

“Yeah, I know,” Ed said fiercely. “And trust me, it’s not like I’m not grateful, but what makes you think I’d be all hunky dory if I watched _you_ die?”

Roy felt all his breath leave him in a silent whoosh. He hunched back, stunned.

Ed continued. “Al and I- we’d be _screwed_ if it wasn’t for you. The truth would’ve gotten out sometime, about what we did. He would’ve been turned into an alchemical lab rat. I would’ve been executed.”

Roy had to close his eyes at that. Human transmutation wasn’t just a taboo. It was a capital crime under military law. Ed would have faced the firing squad regardless of how young he was.

It kept Roy awake sometimes. What would happen if someone with ill intent and political power uncovered the Elrics’ secret.

“Hawkeye and the others would protect you in the event of my death,” Roy murmured. “We have connections–“

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Ed snapped. “And this isn’t even about equivalence. You give us protection, access to resources, I give you service and publicity. We’re _even.”_

Roy’s head spun. “Then why would you be so upset if–“

“The same reason as you, you dumb shit! I mean, God, Mustang, what exactly do you think I was _crying_ for?” Ed sniffled. “You scared the shit out of me too. And I–I don’t want to lose anyone else that I– anyone else.”

Roy shook his head in confusion. “I don’t–I–“

Ed rolled his eyes with enough force to affect gravity. “God, you’re really gonna make me spell it out?” he snarled. “ _I care about you, you asshole._ You don’t wanna see me die? Well, I don’t want to see you die either. So next time we get into a bad spot, we _figure it out_. We _keep_ our promises. None of this martyrdom bullshit.”

Roy was– out of words. He stared.

Even in the low light, Ed’s face was bright red. He bit his lip irritably and looked away. “What, that not simple enough for you? Want me to draw a picture?” Roy got the impression that if Ed had use of both arms, he’d be crossing them petulantly.

Roy was so floored by everything– this whole day, this week, his lockbox subordinate fucking _crying on his shoulder_ that all he can could up with when he regained human speech is, “Okay.”

Ed blinked. Then glared. “’Okay?’ That’s all you–“

“Okay,” Roy repeated, smiling. “No more martyrdom. You’re right. We both have too much to do. We don’t have time to die.” He rested a hand gently on Ed’s right shoulder, where his neck met his automail port.

Ed glared at him suspiciously, like he was waiting for Roy to turn around and weaponize his vulnerability against him. Roy just looked back patiently.

Gradually, a careful grin broke out on Ed’s battered face. “Yeah, okay. No more dying.” He nudged Roy’s hand, half-jesting, half-sincere. “Deal.”

Roy grinned and nodded. Under his hand, Ed felt small and strong. The fire in his eyes burned on.

Then Ed reached out and pinched Roy’s good leg, hard.

Roy yelped. “Ow! What the hell was that for?”

Ed smirked, and said with true threat in his voice, “If you ever tell anyone I cried on you, forget about all that, because _I_ will kill you. Slowly and painfully. With lots of knives. I’ll rip off your stupid hair and choke you with it. I’ll–“

Roy laughed, easy and open, and squeezed Ed’s shoulder again. “Deal.”


End file.
